Previous Chapter ...
Sheila arrived on a bright morning, a soldier driving her in. We greeted her with hugs, Nancy was holding her child, squirming to be put down. Sheila knelt and gave him the tightest embrace, which he didn’t quite understand. We’d told him many times that she was his mother. But such words to a boy of four meant little at the sight of a stranger. Sophie and Jane’s daughter, Helen, were standing right behind Louie and expected an equal hug from her, arms outstretched, which they promptly received.
We told her the sad news about Bill and showed her to the loft, her new home. Nancy and Jane had it ready and waiting months earlier, setting up a small bed for Louie beside hers. When presented with the idea he threw a fit, refusing to leave his sisters. She would have to take all three for any sleepover, which was their terms as they stood side by side and looked up at her with cute but serious faces. Diplomat that she was, she accepted those terms on the spot.
But she was so tired she fell upon the bed and was fast asleep within seconds. We told the children it must be her nap time and led them away.
In her years of absence Nancy and Jane had become a close-knit, powerful team, motherhood somehow bolstering their hormones and self-confidence. Jim and I saw how taxing it was on them in the first months and offered to help. Soon we were under their direction in this hectic child-raising, learning how to prepare formula and feed them, change diapers, dress them and finally watch over them as they crawled around the living room floor, their huge playpen, while we tried to sit and enjoy our morning coffee with a book in hand. But it was a futile attempt, as one or the other would crawl off to pull a lamp off its stand or steal a toy from sister, causing us to jump up every minute to set things straight.
I don’t know how, but the deal quickly turned into this: Jim and I would handle the mornings, up until lunch, taking care of the babies, soon toddlers, cleaning up the breakfast dishes, doing the day’s laundry even, while the women had their mornings free. Then they’d come downstairs and prepare lunch and take over, giving us the rest of the day. Jim would head to the hospital and I to my study, tired and eager to relax and read.
Since the children napped most of the afternoon it was apparent that Nancy and Jane got the better deal. A few weeks into this arrangement Nancy asked for an exercise machine, set up in Miranda’s huge bedroom, so she could work out after breakfast each morning, while Jim and I took care of the children. We drove to an abandoned gym in Burlington and retrieved a work-out bicycle with a screen showing all sorts of landscapes as you made your way through them with avatar competitors to beat. I was quite impressed with the graphics though not enough to try it out.
But within a week Jane and Nancy were bringing home more equipment and half the room became their private gym. The workouts intensified over time. I was glad they had a new passion, even impressed seeing their physiques so improved, their bellies tight, their arms and legs impressive with clearly defined muscles. They’d come downstairs in their tank tops and shorts, a towel tied around their waists to relieve us of our duties, their skin dripping with sweat. We’d have lunch and they’d carry the three-year-olds in their arms, effortlessly now, two at a time, like trophies, upstairs to their naps. Then the women would repair to the back deck and tan, talking and stroking each other with oil, naked except for their bikini bottoms. And even those came off, like some cult of sun worshippers. They looked twenty again, triathlon athletes, confident in themselves and domineering, especially in bed. Jim and I stood in awe and stepped out of their way. In a similar manner their minds also hardened, in blunt honesty and self-confidence and giving us orders, a formidable team. Once again Nancy seemed like the fierce woman the first day I met her, covered in mud and blood, almost intimidating. But one thing was different now. I wasn’t the famous young writer anymore that could enchant her mind. I felt old and sidelined.
Sometimes I felt like little Louie. But I didn’t complain. Neither did Jim. We were preoccupied with our growing children, and they were as attached to us as their mothers. Our afternoons and evenings were all ours and our sex lives were good. The thought occurred that Nancy used me like one of her work-out machines.
I went to wake Sheila for a late dinner, where she told us of her 'agonies and trials' as she called them. She never thought it would be so hard to give away expensive, life-saving vaccines for free. But she miscalculated the mistrustful minds of foreigners, their reluctance at first, thinking such an offer from strangers had to have a catch to it, that there had to strings attached or some evil scheme behind it all.
Then came the bad news. She told us the world was not at peace, that we were about to be invaded and at war with the Russian bloc, very soon.
A flotilla of ships, the leftovers of our European allies were on their way to help us fight the Russians, who were preparing a far larger fleet and not far behind. Europe was conquered, she said, all of it. Turkey, Russia’s ally, was blocking any threat from the East.
Their blitzkrieg through the southern half of Europe took only two weeks, a complete surprise attack with a force of jets and tanks and ships the French and English and Germans had no chance of stopping. They were defenceless and outnumbered ten to one. England held out, giving her allies just enough time to escape, another Dunkirk she said, already on their way here.
But the Russians intended to follow this up with an assault on our Eastern coastline, expecting our forces were as weak as our allies. And with this continent conquered, they’d rule the world. The far East was in complete shambles, not a threat to anyone, not even worth invading, any more than the Mongolian desert.
This was shocking news to us all. I asked if we were in imminent danger. There she hesitated. She didn’t know. She’d call Durham and Washington tomorrow and find out more. After landing in Vancouver she’d traveled non-stop, almost sleepless, in a military convoy across highway one in Canada, the only safe corridor across the continent. From Montreal she was brought here the night before and dead tired. The last thing she mentioned was that general Steele was in Manchester and wanted us to meet him there in two days’ time. She was still so weary I walked her back to the loft before coffee was served.
We knew so little there was nothing to discuss, only wonder. The others soon went to bed but I to my study, to ponder this news. I stayed up most of the night, vaguely trying to guess our strength as a nation if this invasion did occur. I had a hundred questions for Sheila but knew she’d probably sleep another ten hours. I had more for general Steele, who’d know far more. But I didn’t want to walk into that meeting without ideas. So I tried to imagine the problem in the widest possible scope, from all angles, thinking outside the box.
I was fairly up to date on the present state of America. It was part of my research for the history I never started. But I did keep tabs and made inquiries whenever I drove with Jim to the hospital. I’d visit patients from a hundred miles around and in idle chat learn a great deal. They were folks of all sorts and all backgrounds, mostly farmers with broken bones or deep cuts, tractor mishaps. Even in their attitudes I’d find facts. The few soldiers there I would question like a reporter and jot down numbers. They all knew who I was, happy to cooperate.
Most patients were women about to give birth. But even their numbers told me something. I’d see the husbands nervously pacing the hallways, eager to talk just for the distraction. I’d ask where they were from, and how big their farms. This gave me a pretty good picture of the demographics of our region and how fast it was growing. From Montreal to Buffalo to our border with New Hampshire, this was the closest hospital. There were only Army medics West and North of us. The power grid was still down in those directions and not enough people living that way to make it a priority. But I heard that the Buffalo region might soon come online, along with Toronto, the hydro plant in Niagara the easiest to restore. People didn’t live in those dark cities, but around them on their farms. The cities were deserted but an open and free supply house for any parts or vehicles one might need.
Further West was 'no man's land', a complete unknown, 'the heart of darkness'. When our armies made their big push four years earlier, they headed North and South but never inland. General Wilde’s army crossed Canada along highway One without resistance, the few still alive coming to them in awe and holding out their hands for the pill. News always seemed to travel faster than his column could. But it smoothed the way for his reception. When they reached Vancouver they turned south, to another ‘highway One’ and down the coast, the populated territory of the Church worth restoring. The other two armies went down our eastern seaboard, one with the mission to restore order in New York and Washington, the other all the way to Jacksonville and then west to Mobile, following the gulf to New Orleans and Houston. Neither army had time for this ‘no man’s land.’ That was the huge belly of our nation. It would be a 'Wild West', they were told, a place to die for nothing, as there was nothing left. The few there with any sanity would come to us.
One thing about the pandemic was that it made disproportionate cuts in certain age groups that would take generations to restore. There was no one over seventy and a huge slice missing in younger children and women. I calculated the female population to be ten or fifteen percent of what it once was and those between the ages of five and twenty were almost extinct. When the plague hit hard, they were the children, outside the Church’s domain and almost none survived. Miranda was lucky to live with us and Anna and Jeff, Joe’s son. They were the anomaly, just like Nancy and me.
Jim told me that a few of us, one in a thousand, had a genetic defence against the virus, no matter how much it mutated. Mine was complete, the same with Joe and his son. His daughter had some protection, like Nancy, never more than mildly sick. That’s how Joe survived. When he left his land he moved to farmhouses with the red mark, where marauders didn’t dare go. He told us he realized he was somehow immune early on, after so many of his farmhands died in his arms during the worst of it, with never a hint of illness. He did his best to keep his wife and children apart and well fed. With this advantage, in rural lots no one would go near, they made it through.
Once the worst waves passed, along with the pillage of cities, the Church realized its first order of business was to produce food and feed itself, in other words ‘tillage.’ So they assigned all able-bodied men a fine house and a lot nearby and also a wife, often a total stranger, as very few couples remained intact. They planned on building an agrarian society from scratch, an orderly and faithful one. Your one price of admission to this ‘new order’ was to feed your partner, make babies and repopulate the land, besides paying the all-important tithe to the Church, which had many mouths to feed.
This subdued the men, like a harness on a mule. And the women just as much, with pregnancies and raising their young, mouths to feed and needing their constant care. It was a hard life, farming and fishing all day long, without machinery when the gas ran out. But it was the only option. A few years later machinery came back into favor and anyone with the know-how was working day and night to restore gas, power, and telephone lines, a few canning plants, putting trucks and tractors back in use and making our food supply much more secure.
This came after the heavy burden of the Church was overthrown, taking its taxes, and worse, giving back nothing except bad advice. It was like the bull in the china shop, wrecking everything fine, then taxing and scaring the people so much they ran away, till its own rabid disease made it finally collapse and die.
With peace and sanity restored along our coasts, with local governments directing improvements, tractors and trucks and electricity in many households, and cargo ships once again belching black smoke into our blue skies, distributing our produce, we thought the military’s task was done. In the last three years years nine-tenths of the soldiers were assigned civilian jobs, wherever manpower was most in need.
Our generals agreed to this willingly, under orders from the President. They kept their best men as long as they could and had them organize arsenals, though they never suspected they’d need them so soon.
They restored a few airfields and naval yards, put a few jets and battleships back in service. But these weren’t what they used to be. Most of the electronics didn’t function, by the loss of satellites and GPS. When the electrical grid went down so did guidance. They slowly lost their orbit paths and collided, shattering each other, the debris taking out the rest in a domino effect in the narrow, crowded band of space they used.
The International space station was emptied of crew the second year of the pandemic. There was no NASA and no ‘international’ left, as the world recoiled in every department of science, the whole human race, like a snail withdrawing into its shell.
Some soldiers took up agrarian life. Our needs demanded it. The others repaired roads and lines, first the grid, then telephone along the coasts. The East had one television station restored, no entertainment, as people were so busy, but for news and government bulletins, and in itself a welcome sign of progress. The lines from East to West were still down, and the trans-Atlantic cables. Shortwave filled in for those. The two coasts and the Gulf were three distinct departments and on their own, in survival mode, Washington overseeing this slow reconstruction with a minimal staff, marking the progress on maps and collecting a few statistics.
So that’s where we stood when Sheila returned, thinking the rest of the world was preoccupied in the same rebuilding and that our oceans were our defense. Mexico was a wasteland. Its steadfast allegiance to their Church, which still denounced technology, abortion, sin and our supposed vaccine was its downfall. They were Catholic to the end and that end came soon for most of them, under the Church’s supervision.
Here is a link to the beginning of the book.
Chapter One ...
